Of shofars, harmonicas, and bells

This morning over breakfast we looked at the calendar, which hangs just above the table, and I noted that today was Rosh Hashanah. Hudson said, with a mouth full of waffle, "I want to SEE her." You want to see whom? I asked. "Roshanah," he explained. Oh, it isn't a SHE, it is a Jewish holiday, I explained. He insisted that he really wanted to SEE HER. I pointed to the square on the calendar where the words were written, "Here are the words that say 'Rosh Hashanah' Hudson, but you can't really SEE Rosh Hashanah because IT is a holiday..." and I just had to trail off because I couldn't remember (sorry Lauren Winner) WHAT Rosh Hashanah was. I remember once, years ago, sitting with my parents at a Le Peep restaurant in Dallas and I was reading the paper over breakfast and noted that it was Rosh Hashanah. My dad said, "Is that a band?" which made me giggle for weeks. It's the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the High Holidays which culminate in Yom Kippur. At least that's what it said on Wikipedia, so it must be true. Totally by coincidence (or WAS it??) we got some harmonicas yesterday which have been tooted with much zeal all day, not unlike the shofar which is blown on Rosh Hashanah:

Harper has been writing quite a few harmonica songs, utilizing the three notes she knows, which she refers to as: "High C, Low C, and Medium-sized C." One of the songs has catchy lyrics that go something like, "There is a fast car named Lightning (Lightning) and she likes the color pink. She has a friend named Mater (Mater) and he is ve-ry brown." The chord progression is a little tricky to describe, but there seems to be lots of High C, Low C, High C, Medium-sized C with a little bit of jazzy slide thrown in somewhere around "the color pink." I expect Disney/Pixar to be calling any day now.

The husband and I got to have a date Thursday night while Grandmother Pate was here. The president of the university where he teaches had all of the new professors to his home for dinner. The food was delicious and the conversation was rich. I also got to have lunch with three of my college roommates yesterday, including the radiant Tiffeny, who you would never know just weeks ago walked down a hall at M.D. Anderson and rang a bell symbolizing having finished almost a year of intense treatment for breast cancer. We ate appetizers and RED VELVET CAKE CHEESECAKE and talked, among other things, about the joy in mothering our THIRTEEN kids.